The first book-length study of the oriental tale in England since 1908, Fabulous Orients is an original work of criticism which illustrates the centrality of narratives of and from the eastern ...territories of Turkey, Persia, China, and India in the formation of the novel and constructions of western identity in a culture on the threshold of empire.
New democracies around the world have adopted constitutional courts to oversee the operation of democratic politics. Where does judicial power come from, how does it develop in the early stages of ...democratic liberalization, and what political conditions support its expansion? This book answers these questions through an examination of three constitutional courts in Asia: Taiwan, Korea, and Mongolia. In a region that has traditionally viewed law as a tool of authoritarian rulers, constitutional courts in these three societies are becoming a real constraint on government. In contrast with conventional culturalist accounts, this book argues that the design and functioning of constitutional review are largely a function of politics and interests. Judicial review - the power of judges to rule an act of a legislature or national leader unconstitutional - is a solution to the problem of uncertainty in constitutional design. By providing 'insurance' to prospective electoral losers, judicial review can facilitate democracy.
Zachary Lockman's book offers a broad survey of the development of Western knowledge about Islam and the Middle East. Beginning with ancient Greek and Roman conceptions of the world, the book goes on ...to discuss European ideas about Islam from its emergence in the seventh century, with particular attention to the age of European imperialism, the era of deepening American involvement in this region, and the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Along the way, Lockman explores how scholars and others in the West have studied and depicted Islam and the Middle East, focusing on the politics and controversies that have shaped Middle East studies in the United States over the past half century, including the debates over Said's influential critique, Orientalism. This book relates many of today's critical issues, including Muslim extremism, terrorism and United States policy in the Middle East, to the broader historical and political contexts.
Tourism has become increasingly ‘exotic’, a process made possible by low-cost charter tourism and cheaper air tickets. Faraway and evermore ‘exotic’ holidays are becoming widespread and within reach ...as destinations make their entry into the mass tourism market. Strolls through the bazaars of Istanbul and cruises on the Nile are packaged into the sea, sand and sun culture of traditional forms of organized mass tourism. At the same time new technologies weave the fabric of tourism and everyday life even closer, circulating images, information, and objects between them. Taking off from this observation, Tourism, Performance and the Everyday invites readers to follow the flow’s of tourist desires, objects, meanings, photographs, fears, dreams and memories weaving together the spaces of and between Western Europe, Turkey and Egypt.
Tourism, Performance and the Everyday carefully analyzes the cultural and social impacts of mass-tourist experiences of ‘exotic’ places on the wider aspects of everyday life. It treats mass-tourism as a cultural phenomenon that feeds into the practices and networks of peoples’ everyday lives rather than as an isolated, trivial or ‘exotic’ event. It traces how these impacts are mediated by various mobilities between home and away through innovate mobile and ethnographic research methods at tourist destinations and the home of tourists. The book contains analysis of diaries, photographs, blogs and photo web sharing sites, participant observation of performing tourists and ‘home ethnographies’ of the afterlife tourist photographs, souvenirs and memories.
In doing this, the book traces out the multiple interconnections and mobilities between everyday spaces and leisure spaces as well as the multiple ways in which the Orient is consumed on holiday and at home. The book appeals to a wide audience among students, researchers and educators within the social and cultural sciences studying, researching and teaching theories and methods of tourism, Orientalism and cultural encounters as well as broader issues of leisure, consumption and everyday life.
1. Performing Tourism, Performing the Orient 2. De-exoticizing Tourist Travel 3. Following Flows 4. Material Cultures of Tourism 5. Mobilising the Orient 6. Doing Tourism 7. Performing Digital Photography 8. The Afterlife of Tourism 9. Tourism Mobilities and Cosmopolitanism Cultures
Michael Haldrup is a lecturer in Geography at Roskilde University, Denmark and a Visiting Research Fellow, Lancaster University, UK, 2007. His main research interest is in tourism, place and everyday life, with a longstanding interest in social theory and spatial relations. He has written extensively on issues relating to mobility, place, identity, cultural industries, heritage and tourism.
Jonas Larsen is a lecturer in Geography at Roskilde University, Denmark. He is interested in mobility, tourism and media and has published 16 refereed articles in tourism, geography, mobility and media in international journals and co-authored two books.
Letters from the East Barber, Malcolm; Bate, Keith; Barber, Professor Malcolm ...
2013, 20160506, 2010, 2016-05-06, 2016-05-10, 2013-07-28, Volume:
18
eBook
No written source is entirely without literary artifice, but the letters sent from Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine in the high middle ages come closest to recording the real feelings of those who ...lived in and visited the crusader states. They are not, of course, reflective pieces, but they do convey the immediacy of circumstances which were frequently dramatic and often life-threatening.
Those settled in the East faced crises all the time, while crusaders and pilgrims knew they were experiencing defining moments in their lives. There are accounts of all the great events from the triumph of the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 to the disasters of Hattin in 1187 and the loss of Acre in 1291. These had an impact on the lives of all Latin Christians, but at the same time individuals felt impelled to describe both their own personal achievements and disappointments and the wonders and horrors of what they had seen. Moreover, the representatives of the military and monastic orders used letters as a means of maintaining contact with the western houses, providing information about the working of religious orders not found elsewhere.
Some of the letters translated here are famous, others hardly known, but all offer unique insight into the minds of those who took part in the crusading movement.
A Political Economy of the Middle East is the most comprehensive
analysis of developments in the political economy of the region over the past several
decades, examining the interaction of economic ...development processes, state systems and
policies, and social actors in the Middle East.
The fourth edition, with new authors Melani Cammett and Ishac Diwan, has been thoroughly
revised, with new introductory chapters that provide an updated framework with which to
understand and study the many changes in demography, education, labor markets,
urbanization, water and agriculture, and international labor migration in recent years.
The new edition also includes: a new chapter that charts the political economy of the
Gulf states and, in particular, the phenomenal growth of oil economies; a new chapter on
the rise of "crony capitalism;" and increased coverage of the changes in civil society
and social movements in the region, including an exploration of the causes, dynamics,
consequences, and aftermath of the Arab uprisings.
In ancient times there were several major trade routes that connected the Roman Empire to exotic lands in the distant East. Ancient sources reveal that after the Augustan conquest of Egypt, valued ...commodities from India, Arabia and China became increasingly available to Roman society. These sources describe how Roman traders went far beyond the frontiers of their Empire, travelling on overland journeys and maritime voyages to acquire the silk, spices and aromatics of the remote East. Records from ancient China, early India and a range of significant archaeological discoveries provide further evidence for these commercial contacts. Truly global in its scope, this study is the first comprehensive enquiry into the extent of this trade and its wider significance to the Roman world. It investigates the origins and development of Roman trade voyages across the Indian Ocean, considers the role of distant diplomacy and studies the organization of the overland trade networks that crossed the inner deserts of Arabia through the Incense Routes between the Yemeni Coast and ancient Palestine. It also considers the Silk Road that extended from Roman Syria across Iraq, through the Persian Empire into inner Asia and, ultimately, China.
Charlemagne never traveled farther east than Italy, but by the mid-tenth century a story had begun to circulate about the friendly alliances that the emperor had forged while visiting Jerusalem and ...Constantinople. This story gained wide currency throughout the Middle Ages, appearing frequently in chronicles, histories, imperial decrees, and hagiographies-even in stained-glass windows and vernacular verse and prose. InEmperor of the World, Anne A. Latowsky traces the curious history of this myth, revealing how the memory of the Frankish Emperor was manipulated to shape the institutions of kingship and empire in the High Middle Ages.
The legend incorporates apocalyptic themes such as the succession of world monarchies at the End of Days and the prophecy of the Last Roman Emperor. Charlemagne's apocryphal journey to the East increasingly resembled the eschatological final journey of the Last Emperor, who was expected to end his reign in Jerusalem after reuniting the Roman Empire prior to the Last Judgment. Instead of relinquishing his imperial dignity and handing the rule of a united Christendom over to God as predicted, this Charlemagne returns to the West to commence his reign. Latowsky finds that the writers who incorporated this legend did so to support, or in certain cases to criticize, the imperial pretentions of the regimes under which they wrote. New versions of the myth would resurface at times of transition and during periods marked by strong assertions of Roman-style imperial authority and conflict with the papacy, most notably during the reigns of Henry IV and Frederick Barbarossa. Latowsky removes Charlemagne's encounters with the East from their long-presumed Crusading context and shows how a story that began as a rhetorical commonplace of imperial praise evolved over the centuries as an expression of Christian Roman universalism.
